How the Warriors can still win Game 5, and the title, without Draymond Green: It could be some of their finest hours

—Straight from today’s Merc website (MY VERSION, sorry had some blog issues so the copy looks a little weird in spots)/

OAKLAND–Yes, the Warriors can win Game 5 without Draymond Green and you could see them start the emotional and strategic wind-up for it on Sunday.

Yes, the Warriors can clinch back-to-back championships on Monday at Oracle Arena without their fiery vocal leader and do-it-all star.

Yes, it will take something spectacular, yes, the Cavaliers will be able to attack the Warriors in new ways with Green out, but yes, the Warriors can do this.

It might even turn into the finest hours of their most glorious season.

The Warriors began to absorb and discuss all of that almost immediately after Green’s suspension was announced on Saturday–during their practice, by the way.

“We’re still confident and we know we have the personnel and the depth to come out and get a win, and that’s all that really matters,” Stephen Curry said.

Coach Steve Kerr even had a very specific and excellent comparison for a Finals team losing a key player and clinching a title, anyway: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar out with an ankle injury and Magic Johnson ascending into NBA lore.

“Kareem did not play in Game 6 in 1980, andMagic had 42 points, 19 rebounds, and 15 assists,” Kerr said of the Lakers’ title-clincher over Philadelphiain Magic’s rookie season.

“I may have gotten those numbers wrong, but if I got them right, I want a gold star.”
Kerr got the points correct, except Johnson actually had 15 rebounds and 7 assists, but this was not an aimless, random reference by Kerr.

The theme: Legendary things can happen in a moment like this, when a team has suffered a loss like the Warriors just did.

Only about an hour earlier, the Warriors found out that Green will be suspended for Monday’s Game 5 after the league, upon review, gave him a Flagrant 1 foul–which put him over the postseason Flagrant points limit–for swiping at LeBron James’ groin in Game 4.

As the media spilled onto their practice floor, the Warriors players and officials were visibly displeased by this news, and said so.

And now they can go out in Game 5 and win, anyway, in an arena that will thunder with rage over James’ complaints and the NBA’s ruling supporting him.

How are the Warriors going to do this without Green, who was the only Warrior to play in all 88 Warriors’ victories this regular- and postseason, an NBA record?

Obviously, it could get bumpy on Monday–the one game this season Green missed was inDenver, and the Warriors lost.

But the Warriors won four playoff games this season without Curry, the unanimous MVP.

They can beatCleveland–and clinch a title–without Green.

It will take a few strategic tweaks, a lot of energy and frantic defense, it will place huge responsibility on Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston to be almost perfect, and it will nudge Harrison Barnes into a more significant role.

The Warriors have enough good players to pull this off at home. They do. They know it.

Also, I’m guessing that Kerr will move Brandon Rush from the inactive list last game into the starting lineup. Which isn’t that remarkable, since Rush started 25 times in the regular season, mostly during Barnes’ early injury.

Starting Rush would allow Kerr to keep Iguodala in the key sixth-man role, and make sure that there are almost always four Warriors who can shoot three-pointers.

They won’t have Green, but the Warriors can still spread the floor, defend LeBron, run like crazy, block out theClevelandrebounders, and set up Curry and Thompson for long-distance flurries.

And if Curry or Thompson want to put together a 1980 Magic performance, I’m sure Kerr would be OK with that, too.

“It’s the model we’ve had in the last few years, ‘Strength in Numbers’,” Iguodala said.

“You don’t look for one guy to try to pick up the slack. You look for 14 guys to pick up the slack in little bits here and there…

“There is an opportunity for a guy to step in. The whole world is watching for him to make a name for himself.”

For the Warriors, the danger of Green’s absence is that it might free upCleveland‘s Kevin Love, who has been erased by Green so far this series.
But that’s what happens when one of the best two-way players in the league gets suspended in the Finals.

It means that James Michael McAdoo, a surprise contributor in Game 4, will almost certainly see more time on Monday. And Leandro Barbosa, who didn’t play on Saturday, probably also will get minutes; so will Marreese Speights, who barely played in Game 4.

Somebody–actually a bunch of somebodies–will have to answer the bell, and isn’t how all the great playoff tales unfold?

And maybe in a few decades, some coach will lose a great player in the middle of some future Finals, and he’ll say, hey, remember when the Warriors lost Draymond Green in Game 5 and then…